Penance
by feeisamarshmallow
Summary: Sometimes Weevil was jealous of Logan Echolls. Sometimes Logan was jealous of Eli Navarro. And sometimes they meet in the bathroom and trade punches. A character study.


**Summary:** Sometimes Weevil was jealous of Logan Echolls. Sometimes Logan was jealous of Eli Navarro. And sometimes they meet in the bathroom and trade punches. A character study.

Warning for language.

* * *

Sometimes Weevil was jealous of Logan Echolls. Not for the obvious reasons: Not for his multimillion dollar mansion, or his stupid yellow SUV or his fat college fund. Not even the sheer privilege afforded by the colour of his skin. Weevil wasn't stupid enough to think that Echolls didn't have it rough in his own way. He heard the whisperings from his abuela. That Aaron had a temper and a short fuse and angry fists to match. That Lynn self-destructed trying to cope. Abuse and addiction took their toll on Weevil's family, but he certainly didn't have a monopoly on shitty things happening. Hell that was why Weevil took it upon himself to track down that geek who filmed Logan's mom taking a dive off the Coronado Bridge. He knew how it felt to lie awake and wonder if doing anything differently could have saved a life.

No, Weevil was jealous of the way Logan was able to fall apart. Logan could show up to school drunk to all hell. He could run after Veronica with those damn puppy-dog eyes, and Veronica would soften her own eyes and let him break down all over her. Logan wore his scars on the outside. He showed everyone all the ways he was fucked up and broken and dared anyone to push the matter further. Weevil kept all his wounds close to his chest, show your hand and you invite someone to hurt you.

Maybe it started when Lilly died. Weevil didn't go to the funeral. He was still completing his community service, but he couldn't have gone anyways. No one knew about him and Lilly, how could he have explained his presence? Instead he picked up fucking trash on the highway and replayed the last moment he had seen Lilly. She had passed him in the hall at school, a few days earlier. Weevil was with his boys, and he knew he couldn't turn to look at her. They hadn't talked in weeks, anyways, since she had gone back to Echolls, and ignored his increasingly desperate and confused letters, and finally transferred out of the only class they shared. She had purposely walked too close, so that her hair almost smacked into his face as she strutted past. He was hit with the sickly-sweet scent of her perfume. But he kept his eyes facing forward, and all he saw was the flash of her perfect blond hair in his peripheral.

Echolls, he got to go to her funeral. Took a week off school. Mourn her like a boyfriend would. Weevil finished his community service, and rode to his uncle's shop. Worked deep into the night, and felt embarrassed when he couldn't stop the tears from coming once his face was hidden underneath a car. First there was Gus, and then Marisol Reyes disappeared only two blocks over from his house. And now Lilly, and for some reason her death felt like it was hitting him the hardest and that only served to make him feel guilty and then angry.

His grief for Lilly was a terrible secret and it ate at him from the inside. But he had a gang to run, and Abuelita riding his ass about going to school, and graduating, and trying Algebra just one more time, and the kids at home who needed to feel like the world wasn't stacked against them. And none of them would understand Lilly and her fantastical allure and the deep wedge of grief her death left in his chest, so Weevil didn't even try.

Echolls, though, everyone knew about his grief. Sure there were other 09ers too, Duncan all zombied-out, and Veronica with her newly chopped hair. But Logan, he was the one who most visibly threw himself into his grief. It made Weevil angry, but only because he wanted what Echolls had. He barely could admit that to himself, and certainly not to anyone else.

* * *

Sometimes Logan was jealous of Eli Navarro. Not for the obvious reasons: Not for the instant fear and authority he commanded, not for his gang, not for his sweet ride. No Logan was jealous of Weevil, because even he had at least one person in life that cared. "I promised my grandmother" wasn't that why Weevil said he still showed up to school? Who was making Logan go anymore? Certainly not his dead mother or his locked-up father. Not his grandparents, dead too incidentally, or maybe his father's parents were just apathetic. No matter, they were abusers just like their son. His sister was in Australia, or Indonesia or god knows where. If Logan disappeared tomorrow, would anyone even notice?

Logan remembered Leticia Navarro well, in some fucked-up way she was as much a parent as his own mother had been. She took care of the house. She asked Logan how his day was going. What did his mother do but drown herself in drinks and plead with Logan that maybe if he didn't talk back to Aaron, or wreck his GameCube, or steal from the liquor cabinet, maybe he wouldn't get beaten.

For the first couple years of employment, Leticia sometimes brought Eli to work with her on school holidays. Probably, Logan thought, in a bid to keep him out of trouble. Eli used to help her, or, more often, sit in the back room and read car magazines. His hair was long then, curling around his ears, and he made a point to scowl whenever he crossed paths with Logan, pulling his shoulders up and crossing his arms to make his preteen-self look more menacing. But once Logan ended up in his back driveway as Leticia and Eli were leaving. He moved a few paces back around a corner and was surprised and more than a bit amused to observe the change in Eli's demeanor. He was relaxed, his face friendly and animated, as he carried his grandmother's bag out to the car for her.

So yeah, he was jealous because at the end of the day, Leticia left his house and went home to hers, and yeah maybe it was a fraction of the size of Logan's, but it was a home in the way his never was. Even before her grandson fucking burned his house to the ground. And at the end of the day, Leticia's family wasn't Logan, it was Eli and her other grandchildren or great-grandchildren or whoever all lived there. She didn't care about Logan, not really, he was just some bratty kid of a family who paid her enough to put up with a shitty job.

Maybe that's why it was so alluring to him to go after Weevil. Weevil acted like Logan had everything he could ever want, when really, Weevil had the one thing Logan wanted, and could never have. Somewhere deep down, Logan knew it wasn't right. He shouldn't have burnt down the pool, he really shouldn't have bought Weevil's house and evicted him, but then again when had Logan ever been a good person?

* * *

All of that is there between them, when Weevil storms into the bathroom. Maybe in another world, in another life, they could've gotten past it all. Could've talked it out, could've been friends. But it's not another world, this is Neptune, and they're a gang leader and a rich asshole, and it could never happen.

Instead, Weevil tells him he can't walk out of the bathroom looking the way he does. And Logan tells Weevil that it wouldn't be much fun anyways. Logan takes the first hit, and he can feel every inch of Weevil's fist connecting with his nose, and the instant gush of blood that follows. He's not angry at Weevil anymore, not really, at least one of them got a good parental figure out of this life. The jealousy fades each time Weevil's fist connects with his face. Sure he's mad at the shitty circumstances of his life, and whoever the fuck killed Felix and decided to frame him for it, and the fact that he lives alone in a goddamn hotel suite, but somehow the only time he's not mad at Weevil is the moment when he's kicking Logan's ass. Figures, he was always kinda fucked up like that.

Logan gets in a few good kicks as Weevil falls to the ground. Weevil gets it now, he's still jealous that Logan got to grieve Lilly, hell that he got to be her boyfriend in a way that Weevil never did. But the anger that rises feels like it's flowing right out of him, like a shield absorbing Logan's attempts to land a punch to his ribs as Weevil pulls him down to the floor too. It's stupid, but Weevil's finally made his peace with all of it. And with a sudden sense of clarity, he realizes that Logan never could've killed Felix. What he didn't want to admit, what he was running from all this time, was that Felix might still be alive if Weevil hadn't led his boys on a vengeful mission against Logan that night. This feels right, letting Logan whale into his shoulder, a bit like a penance. He lost Lilly and then Felix and he still can't figure out how to deal with that, but it does feel like somehow, in some fucked up way, this is making it a little bit more right.

* * *

They're sitting slumped against the wall outside the office, waiting to see the principal. Logan has a wad of kleenex pressed against his still-sluggishly bleeding nose. Weevil hunches over, trying to disguise how much his ribs ache, a combination of getting jumped the night before and their recent fight. Van Clemmons calls in Echolls first and as he rises from his seat he turns towards Weevil and tells him he's looking forward to their partnership, and Weevil can't help but exhale a breath of laughter.

_fin_

**A/N:** I started working on this about a month ago, far before the revival came out. I've always been interested in Logan and Weevil's not-quite-friends and not-quite-enemies relationship. This was borne out of a piece of meta I wrote for VMHQ's 30 Days of VM countdown.

Tell me what you think! Or come say hi on tumblr: feeisamarshmallow.


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